  | Full Text Reviews: Booklist - 02/15/2006 Thirteen-year-old Ann Fay always wanted to be just like her father, but when he gives her a pair of overalls before going off to fight Hitler, her feelings are mixed: Wearing britches so I could take the place of my daddy wasn't the same as wearing them so I could climb trees. Minding the home front gets harder after she loses her youngest brother to a polio outbreak, then contracts the disease herself. Hostetter weaves her own North Carolina community's history into heartfelt fiction, marked by an agreeable, vernacular narrative and unobtrusive symbolism surrounding the color blue--the hue of both Ann Fay's overalls and the pesky wisteria vine that, like grown-up responsibility made palpable, threatens to overtake her victory garden. An incongruous structural rift mars the novel's latter half, set in the polio hospital, where the heart-tugging family drama gives way to a programmatic story line about an obstacle-laden friendship between Ann Fay and an African American patient. Still, the intriguing history of the illness and the powerful first-person voice will propel readers through to the novel's deeply satisfying conclusion. - Copyright 2006 Booklist. Loading...
 |